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A WIRELESS VISION: ANYTIME, ANYWHERE

COMPUTING

SKILLS AND TRAINING: FINDING THE RIGHT BLEND

INTEGRATING THIRD-PARTY WEB SERVICES

SOFTWAREASSURANCE

SECURITYPATCHES

+PLUS

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MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGYDEPLOYMENT

ISSUE 4 JUNE 2003

DYNAMICCOMPUTINGTAKING THE STRAIN OUT OF DATA MANAGEMENT

DYNAMICCOMPUTING

1June 2003

i Executive editor: Jo Russell Editor: Gary Eastwood Commissioning editor: Phil

Jones Creative director: Crispian Brown Art editor: Erroll Jones Picture editor:

Rachel James Deputy picture editor: Rachel Curry Account director: Ingrid von

Bibra Production director: Andrea St Hill Editorial director: Stuart Rock

Publisher: Mike Bokaie

FYi is published for Microsoft Limited by Caspian Publishing Limited, Millbank

Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QP. General enquiries: 020 7828 0706

Editorial: 020 7828 0744 Fax 020 7828 0737

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take appropriate professional advice before acting on any issue raised.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

Repro by Blaze Creative. Printed by TPL Printers (UK)

© 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, the Microsoft logo,

Outlook, Windows, Visual Studio, Windows Server, Active Directory, Sharepoint,

Microsoft Press, MapPoint and InfoPath are either registered trademarks or

trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other

countries. All other trademarks are held by their respective companies.

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: WILL WEBSTER

DESIGNS FOR THE FUTURE 10-11

“Once the Windows Server 2003

upgrade is complete, we plan to

move over to Exchange 2003 ”LEE BINGHAM, IT DIRECTOR, PAUL SMITH, ON WINDOWS SERVER 2003 AS A PLATFORM FOR THE FUTURE

IN-BOX 2-5“What is the best way to share an internet connection among remote office users using

Windows XP?”

The Clinic responds to this and other problems and questions.

A WIRELESS VISION: ANYTIME, ANYWHERE COMPUTING 6-7“Developing applications for mobile devices will be a whole new ball game with thousands

of new entrants designing software across a variety of devices.”

Robbie Ray Wright, EMEA director for mobile devices at Microsoft EMEA, discusses Microsoft’s

vision of a wireless future, and what that means for the Microsoft developer community.

WINDOWS SERVER 2003: A STRONG FOUNDATION 8-9“Our aim is to make life easier for disabled people.”

David McGregor, IT director, Queen Elizabeth Foundation, on how the forward-thinking charity is

using Windows Server 2003 to improve efficiency.

TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION: A PLATFORM FOR LEARNING 12-13“With many organisations adopting .NET, they need to look at their developers in that

environment so they are better equipped to leverage that platform.”

How to get the right blend of “real world” experience and technical knowledge.

WINDOWS SERVER 2003: DYNAMIC COMPUTING 14-16“There simply aren’t enough people around to manage or operate the type of data centre

world we have today.”

Michael Emanuel, senior product manager for Microsoft’s enterprise management division,

discusses the role of the Dynamic Systems Initiative in building the data centre of the future.

LICENSING: SOFTWARE ASSURANCE 17“Microsoft has done a lot of work with customers and partners to make Software Assurance

more valuable to them.”

Sue Hogg outlines Microsoft’s work to make Software Assurance more valuable to customers.

WEB SERVICES: NOTHING TO FEAR 18-19“IT professionals are accustomed to running web sites. This really is the same thing as

administering a web service.”

Ivo Salmre, Microsoft UK product manager for .NET developer technology, demystifies web services.

SECURITY PATCHES: THE RANT 20“Where the virus is significant, such as Slammer, we have destroyed all SQL evaluation

software and replaced it with protected copies.”

Stuart Okin, chief security officer at Microsoft UK, responds to a user “rant” on security patches.

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SHORTCUTS

To feedback your comments on FYI Technology or amend your sub-scription details, please go to www.microsoft.com/uk/fyitechnology

Q

2 FYITECHNOLOGY

ON PREVENTING AN EXCHANGE 2000

SERVER FROM BEING USED AS A

MAIL RELAY:

Q: WE RECENTLY DISCOVERED THAT OUR

EXCHANGE 2000 SERVER HAD BEEN HACKED

AND USED AS AN E-MAIL RELAY BY A

SPAMMER. WE HAVE MANY HOME USERS AND

SEVERAL OUTLYING OFFICES WHICH DEPEND

ON THE SERVER TO PROVIDE RELAY SERVICES.

HOW CAN WE PREVENT FURTHER ATTACKS?

RESPONSE: By default Exchange 2000

does not allow unauthenticated users to

relay through the server. So problems like

this one usually stem from incorrectly

reconfiguring relay restrictions, making it

possible for unauthenticated users to

access the relay features. The solution is to

go back and tighten up relay restrictions.

First, start Exchange System

Manager. Expand the Organisation_name

object, and then expand the Servers

node. Expand the Server_name object of

the server on which you want to prevent

mail relay, and then expand the Protocols

node. Now expand the SMTP node, right-

click the virtual SMTP server, on which

you want to prevent mail relay, and then

click Properties. Click the Access tab, and

then click Relay.

You are now looking at the Relay

Restriction dialog box. The ‘Only the list

below’ option is turned on, and by default

that list will be empty. The ‘Allow all com-

puters which successfully authenticate to

relay, regardless of the list above’ option

is also turned on. This permits users and

computers that can authenticate with the

server to relay through the server. A

hacker might try and change this setting

➔➔ iN-BOX

UPDATEMOBILITY RESOURCESDo you need help extending messaging platforms to mobile clients? Are

you struggling to decide which mobile device is appropriate for your

users? Microsoft has produced a technical guide to help you get started

on mobile messaging projects. The practical hands-on paper provides

advice on: how to migrate Microsoft® Exchange Servers; what products

and services you need to manage and connect mobile devices through

mobile operator networks securely; what makes a great user experience.

To download this resource, visit:

www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/

itsolutions/mobile/default.asp

Microsoft’s ‘Guide to Mobility’ is also now available. The guide presents

a route through the maze of mobile solutions, from Windows XP to

mobile devices. Customers can find out more about featured partners

and can register for Microsoft and partner events through to July.

For further information, please visit:

www.microsoft.com/uk/mobile

ACCELERATED SUCCESSToday’s job market is more competitive than ever and fast-changing

technology creates a high demand for qualified professionals to help

organisations keep pace and flourish. If you are an IT professional or a

software developer, businesses need your skills now, and certification

can help to demonstrate your technical expertise in Microsoft technolo-

gies to employers, clients and peers, as well as keep your career moving

ahead. With the developer community expected to grow 48 per cent by

the end of 2003, professional certification can be a key way to validate

skills and advance on-the-job skills. Microsoft’s new MCAD/MCSD self-

paced training kits deliver real-world developer training for training on

the job and for certification exams. The kits now feature comprehensive

exam preparation content in addition to interactive exercises, skill

assessments, lesson reviews and summaries. For further information

about the kits for developers and IT professionals, visit:

www.microsoft.com/mspress/certification or

www.microsoft.com/mspress/uk

LAST CALL FOR TECH ED 2003Microsoft will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of Tech Ed in Europe

this year. Held in Barcelona, Spain, between June 30 and July 4 the

conference provides an opportunity for IT professionals to immerse

themselves in the latest Microsoft technologies, platforms and tools.

To register online for the event, before June 30, visit:

www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/home.asp

QUESTIONS TO THE CLINIC >>>>

3June 2003

to allow anonymous access or an

authorised user could exploit this setting

to use relay services.

To tighten this up, click Add. You can

now permit a single computer, a group of

computers, or a whole domain to relay

through the server by making the appro-

priate selection in the Computer dialog

box. Allowing access by IP address or

domain name is helpful for users who do

not authenticate with the Exchange server

(for example, in an internet service

provider [ISP] implementation).

When you have finished stipulating

which specific computers, addresses or

domains can now access relay services,

click OK in the Relay Restrictions dialog

box, click Apply, and then click OK in the

Default SMTP Virtual Server Properties

dialog box. You should now have much

tighter control over relay services, and a

better idea of who, if anyone, may be

abusing their privileges.

ON DEALING WITH PERSISTENT

REGISTRATIONS REQUESTS IN OFFICE

Q: COPIES OF MICROSOFT OFFICE HAVE

RECENTLY BEGUN PERSISTENTLY DEMAND-

ING WE REGISTER THEM, EVEN THOUGH

THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE. HOW CAN

WE SWITCH THIS OFF?

RESPONSE: This problem has emerged

since 15 April this year, when some

copies of Office began prompting users to

register, even if they have already, or if

they are not users that would normally be

expected to do so. It can persist even

after installation of Service Pack 3 (SP-3).

Two patches are available that cure the

problem, depending on whether users are

currently on SR-1/1a & 2 and one for

users patched to SP-3.

However, applying the patches can be

problematic and should only be attempt-

ed by Microsoft Support Professionals, or

others with the appropriate expertise. A

fuller description of what is involved, and

who should do it can be found at the

Microsoft Knowledge Base. Look for

article 818798 at:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=818798

ON UPGRADING FROM OUTLOOK®

EXPRESS TO OUTLOOK 2002

Q: WE ARE PREPARING TO MOVE TO

OUTLOOK 2002. WHAT IS THE SIMPLEST WAY

OF MIGRATING OUR EXISTING OUTLOOK

EXPRESS ACCOUNTS SETTINGS, MESSAGES

AND ADDRESSES TO THE NEW PRODUCT.

RESPONSE: There are three simple

processes involved in this migration. Begin

by importing Outlook Express account set-

tings using Import and Export in the

Outlook 2002 File Menu. Click Import

Internet Mail Account Settings, then next,

then Outlook Express. Make sure that the

name displayed is the right one, click next

and do the same with the email. Check that

the incoming and outgoing mail servers are

correct, ditto account name and password,

and click Next. Be aware that with Microsoft

Network (MSN) version 2.5 POP mail, the

Log on using Secure Password

Authentication (SPA) check box must be

selected. Choose the method you use to

connect to the Internet, click Next, and click

Finish to import your mail account settings.

Importing Outlook Express messages,

address books and rules is also done

from the Outlook 2002 File menu using

the Import and Export option. This time

choose Import Internet Mail and

Addresses and then click Next. Select the

appropriate version of Outlook Express

(4.x, 5), check that Import Mail, Import

Address Book, and Import Rules are all

selected and click Next again. Select to

import into either the Outlooks Contacts

Folder or Personal Address Book, and

choose how duplicates are handled

during import. Click Finish.

The last step is to make Outlook

2002 your default email client. This can

either be done within Outlook by clicking

on the Other tab in the tools menu, select-

ing Make Outlook the default program for

Email, Contacts and Calendar, and hitting

OK. Alternatively, quit Outlook and open

Control Panel. Double click on Internet

Options, click the Programs tab and

select Microsoft Outlook from the email

list. Click Apply, and then click OK.

ON XP SERVICE PACK 1

Q: AFTER RECENTLY INSTALLING SERVICE

PACK 1 FOR WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

WE HAVE LOST ALL OUR ORIGINAL

NETWORK SETTINGS AND NOW XP DOESN’T

WANT TO LET US CREATE NEW ONES. WHAT

CAN WE DO?

RESPONSE: Sometimes using System

Restore after installing Windows XP SP1

does cause network problems. Specifically,

you may no longer be able to create a

remote access or Dial-Up Networking con-

nection, the Network Connection page of

the New Connection Wizard will be dimmed ➔➔

>>>>>>>RUSSELL READ>>>>>>RICHARD MANNION>>>STUART RAILSON

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and unavailable, and the Network

Connections folder will be empty.

If you now also check the System log of the

Event Viewer you will see the following:

Date: <date> Source: Service

Control Manager

Time: <time> Category: None

Type: Error Event ID: 7023

User: N/A

Computer: <computername>

Description: The Remote Access

Connection Manager service terminated

with the following error: Access is denied.

Date: <date> Source: Rasman

Time: <time> Category: None

Type: Error Event ID: 20035

User: N/A

Computer: <computername>

Description: Remote Access Connection

Manager failed to start because it could

not create buffers. Restart the computer.

Access is denied.

When you try to start the Remote Access

Connection Manager service, you receive

the following error message: Could not

start the Remote Access Connection

Manager service on Local Computer.

Error 5: Access is denied

NOTE: You receive this error message

although you are logged on with an

account that has administrative privileges.

This is because the System registry hive

is not correctly restored to the Windows

registry after you restore Windows.

To resolve this problem, reinstall SP1 for

Windows XP. However, if you cannot

reinstall SP1 you will have to resort to

modifying the registry using the Registry

Editor. Any errors made in this process

could have serious repercussions for the

system, and could force you to reinstall

Windows. It is essential that the following

procedure is adhered to exactly, and that

you back-up registry before starting it.

Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can

solve problems that result from using

Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry

Editor at your own risk.

If you cannot reinstall SP1, verify that the

Objectname string value is set to

LocalSystem in the following registry

subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current

ControlSet\Services\RasMan

Now delete the following registry subkeys.

The presence of these subkeys on a

Windows XP-based computer that does

not have SP1 installed can cause the

symptoms described earlier:

*HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current

ControlSet\Services\RasMan\PPP\EAP\25

*HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current

ControlSet\Services\RasMan\PPP\EAP\26

To delete these keys, follow these steps,

starting with a back-up of the registry keys.

1. Click Start, and then click Run.

2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then

click OK.

3. Locate and then click the following key

in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current

ControlSet\Services\RasMan

4. On the File menu, click Export.

5. In the File Name box, type exported

rasman key, and then click Save.

6. In the RasMan key, locate and then

click the ObjectName string value.

[If this value is not set to LocalSystem,

follow these steps:

1. On the Edit menu, click Modify.

2. In the Value data box, type

LocalSystem, and then click OK.]

7. Locate and then double-click the follow-

ing key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentC

ontrolSet\Services\RasMan\PPP\EAP\25

8. On the Edit menu, click Delete.

9. Click Yes to confirm that you want to

delete the selected registry key.

10. Repeat steps 7 to 9 to delete the

following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentC

ontrolSet\Services\RasMan\PPP\EAP\26

11. Quit registry editor, and then restart

your computer.

ON ENABLING INTERNET CONNECTION

SHARING ON A SMALL OFFICE NETWORK

CONNECTION IN WINDOWS XP

Q: WHAT IS THE BEST WAY OF SHARING AN

INTERNET CONNECTION AMONG REMOTE

OFFICE USERS USING WINDOWS XP?

RESPONSE: Through the Internet

Connection Sharing (ICS) feature for

network and dial-up connections, you

can use Windows XP to connect a home

network or small-office network to the

internet. For example, you may have a

home network in which a Windows XP-

based computer connects to the internet

by using a dial-up connection. If you

enable ICS on the computer that uses the

dial-up connection, you can provide

network address translation, addressing,

and name resolution services for all of

the computers on your network.

For Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)

to be enabled, the Windows XP-based

computer must have two network adapters,

one for the local network, and one for the

internet connection. Begin ICS Setup by

double-clicking Network Connections in

Control Panel. Choose the LAN or dial-up

connection you want to share, then click

Change Settings for this connection under

Network Tasks. On the Advanced tab, click

to select the Allow other network users to

connect through this computer's Internet

connection check box.

If you're using a dial-up connection,

and you want it to dial automatically when

another computer on your network

attempts to connect to the internet, click

to select the Establish a dial-up connec-

tion whenever a computer on my network

attempts to access the internet check

box. If you want to allow other network

users to enable or disable the shared

internet connection, click to select the

“Allow other network users to control or

disable the shared internet connection”

check box.

NB. When you enable ICS, the network

adapter that is connected to the home or

small-office network receives a new static

IP address of 192.168.0.1, with a subnet

mask of 255.255.255.0. Existing TCP/IP

The information contained in this section represents a selection of the useful exchanges found on the Microsoft web

site, and originates from various sources. It is for general information purposes only. Microsoft Limited makes no

warranties, representations or undertakings in relation to this information, including but not limited to its quality,

accuracy, completeness or fitness for purpose. Microsoft accepts no responsibility for reliance placed on this

information. Always obtain appropriate professional advice on specific problems or matters.

➔➔

➔➔

5June 2003

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THE COMPLETE PICTURE

For TechNet events, visit: www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/tcevents/itevents For MSDN events, visit: www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/events/events.asp

24 June 2003TechNet Support WebcastMicrosoft Windows Server 2003:

Automated Deployment Services

26 June 2003TechNet SpotlightReadingMicrosoft Solutions for Internet

Business

30 June – 4 JulyTechEd 2003BarcelonaMSDN & TechNet

1 July 2003TechNet Support WebcastMicrosoft Exchange Server 2003:

Overview of Transport and

Mobility Features

15 July 2003TechNet EveningReadingWindows Server 2003 Active

Directory Diagnostics,

Troubleshooting and Recovery

15 July 2003TechNet Support WebcastMicrosoft Windows XP: An

Overview of the Advanced

Networking Pack

19 August 2003TechNet Evening ReadingManaging Internet Information

Server 6.0

18 September 2003TechNet Evening ReadingUnderstanding Group Policy on

Windows Server 2003

TECHNICAL EVENTSFROM MICROSOFTMicrosoft offers a wide range of

events delivering technical

“how to” information to IT

professionals through TechNet

and to developers through

MSDN. These include regular

FREE events which focus on

delivering in-depth information

on developing, deploying, using

and optimising Microsoft

technologies.

connections on the network may be lost

and must be re-established.

Other issues to bear in mind when

using ICS in remote office locations include

remembering the fact ICS assumes its

Windows XP host is the only Internet gate-

way on the network and is responsible for

all internal network addresses. All hosts on

the network except the ICS host are expect-

ed to be configured to obtain IP address

and DNS configuration automatically.

You cannot modify the default

network configuration after you enable

ICS. This includes changing the range of

private IP addresses that are handed out

(DHCP allocator), enabling or disabling

DNS, and configuring a range of public

IP addresses.

If your remote office users need to

gain access to a corporate network that is

connected to the internet by a tunnel

server, the users need to create a virtual

private network (VPN) connection to tunnel

from the computer on the ICS network to

the corporate tunnel server on the internet.

The VPN connection is authenticated and

secure, and creating the tunnelled connec-

tion allocates proper IP addresses, DNS

server addresses, and WINS server

addresses for the corporate network.

You may need to configure programs

and services to work properly across the

internet. For example, if users on your

home network want to play a game with

other users on the internet, the game must

be configured on the connection in which

ICS is enabled. Services that you provide

must be configured so that internet users

can gain access to them.

➔➔

6 FYITECHNOLOGY

WHAT IS MICROSOFT’S LONG-TERM VISION OF THE WIRELESS FUTURE?

We see a plethora of smart devices entering the market in a variety

of form factors and designed to meet the specific requirements of

each individual user. From the mobile professional to the gaming

enthusiast, we see our hardware partners creating compelling

solutions that drive the uptake of mobile data.

Developing applications for mobile devices will also be a whole

new ball game with thousands of new entrants designing software

across a variety of devices. Mobile operators will play a key role by

providing software as a service that invigorates a multitude of

devices. Ultimately, this will bring fresh opportunities for software

and wireless companies to partner and provide customer value

by developing connected scenarios for consumers and mobile

professionals, and moreover, new revenue opportunities for the

industry as a whole.

WHAT IS MICROSOFT DOING NOW TO FULFIL THIS VISION?

Microsoft is committed as ever to this wireless vision of the

future, and we are making real progress towards

achieving it. Over the last three years

we’ve had a single vision of mobility

– we’ve talked about the power of

software in the mobile space, and

in particular in smart devices. This

is important because previously

what really mattered in the mobile

space was the power and capacity

of devices, but now people are

looking at mobile from the per-

spective of what really makes

these devices useful – the

software and applications.

When you look at the market

you can see that there is real

momentum building. In Europe,

in the PDA [personal digital

assistant] market, roughly two

million units have been shipped,

and now we are starting to see the

emergence of the Smartphone, which

is a mobile phone with PDA functionality. These devices have a

real richness of function and capability, and as users and devel-

opers start to realise what they can do with them we are seeing a

version of Moore’s Law beginning to apply. It is a virtuous cycle in

which as each new application arrives, more companies are seeing

the possibilities and committing more of their efforts to developing

yet more applications.

Today, there are already 10,500 applications available for

the Microsoft Pocket PC-based PDA. For the Smartphone, which is

a relatively new device, there are currently fewer applications on

the market, but that number is growing fast. With the Microsoft

Mobile2Market program, we are working with independent software

vendors (ISVs) to build a catalogue of applications that we are taking

to operators around the world, such as Orange, which can then make

those applications available directly to their customers via their

web sites. The Mobile2Market on-line catalogue launched with

over 150 applications for the Pocket PC and Smartphone.

New applications are being added to the catalogue at an

incredible rate. By the end of June there will be

hundreds of applications available.

WHAT IMPACT WILL THE FUTURE NETWORK

INFRASTRUCTURE HAVE ON THIS VISION?

Looking to the future, operators will be able

to offer new services and applications at

much greater speed and lower cost as

handsets become “smarter”. New services

and applications can be installed on

to smart handsets as and when the

operator wishes to offer the new web

service or when the user wants to

download a new application.

In the fixed line world we’ve

always taken the view: “Build the

pipe and we’ll manage the overflow”,

and when we looked at the usage

model for broadband services one

key trend we found was that increased

bandwidth did not necessarily lead to

changes in usage patterns. What was evident

Robbie Ray Wright, Microsoft’s EMEA director for mobile devices, discusses thecompany’s “anytime, anywhere” vision of a wireless future, and what that meansfor the Microsoft developer community.

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7June 2003

was that users got more personal with their

existing applications and services. So for

example, a user would typically run a number

of their favourite applications or web-based

services, instead of something completely

different or new. The benefit of increased

bandwidth will lead to numerous possibilities

with exciting new mobile applications, but

essentially we expect to see people access-

ing a wide range of applications and web

services that would normally be associated

with desktop computing, but on their various

mobile devices.

DO YOU SEE A “KILLER” APPLICATION THAT WILL

REALLY DRIVE DEMAND FOR MOBILE PRODUCTS

AND SERVICES?

I don’t think it is possible to talk about a killer

application for mobile devices. Mobile is

about 24-hour access to information and

services for individuals, and people will want

to access different things at different times.

Some of the time people will want access to

Word and Excel viewers via the expansion

cards on their Pocket PC, at other times they

may want games or personal information management (PIM).

The longer people use their mobile devices, the more they will

come to rely on them for a variety of activities, such as internet

access, gaming, picture messaging, maps and on-line shopping.

We therefore think it’s important to provide a really rich environ-

ment and a choice of quality applications that don’t restrict what

people can do with their mobile devices.

YOU HAVE DISCUSSED THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTNERS, BUT WHAT IS

MICROSOFT DOING TO ENCOURAGE CORPORATE DEVELOPERS TO GET

INVOLVED IN MOBILITY?

Certainly, a key partnership is with the network operators in this

space. Companies such as T-Mobile and Orange have a critical role to

play in delivering mobility, and we all share the same view of where we

are trying to go. But both Microsoft and the operators also absolutely

have to work with corporate developers to build this future. For the

corporate developer market *we have a program called Mobile

Workplace, a partnership with developers and systems integrators

designed toprovide a framework that makes it easy for corporate

developers to build and deploy mobile solutions – specifically, line of

business solutions.

Simplicity is the key here. We have to make it as easy as

possible for corporate customers to embrace mobility, by support-

ing them through partnerships such as Mobile Workplace, and by

providing tools that allow them to deploy

applications to mobile platforms as easily as

they do to the desktop.

We know that there is great interest in

developing mobile applications in the corpo-

rate community – for example, 380,000

SDKs [software development kits] have

already been distributed. At the Microsoft

Mobile Developer Conferences earlier this

year we launched the Microsoft .NET

Compact Framework, which includes

everything a corporate developer needs to

immediately begin building applications for

use with smart devices, such as Pocket

PCs and Smartphones.

The .NET Compact Framework is now

included in Visual Studio® .NET 2003, which

enables millions of desktop developers and

the growing pool of C# developers to begin

building smart mobile applications using a

consistent programming model and with little

additional investment in programming skills.

Our ultimate vision and one we are getting

closer to with the release of Visual Studio.NET

2003 is to allow commercial and non-com-

mercial ISVs to target their products across any number of devices

without having to spend cycles of time in redevelopment. Essentially,

the ISV that creates an enterprise-level application for the Windows

desktop should easily be able to develop that application to the

Smartphone or a specific line-of-business type device in a matter of

hours as opposed to a matter of months.

ARE THERE ANY BARRIERS TO OVERCOME BEFORE DEVELOPERS CAN

BEGIN TO DELIVER THE SAME LEVEL OF FUNCTION AND PERFORMANCE

TO WIRELESS AS THEY DO TO THE DESKTOP?

I really can’t imagine what such a barrier might be. Certainly, on the

device side I don’t think there are any significant obstacles. Now

smart devices have 400MHz processors driving them, and the

ability to use storage devices, such as the 1GB SD card, there are

few applications they cannot handle. On the network side, devices

like the Compaq iPAQ can now support links to Wi-Fi LANs [local

area networks], and operators are already delivering GPRS and

starting to roll out 3G, so we already have the ability to be

connected productively wherever we are.

MOBILE WORKPLACE

In partnership with Accenture, HP and

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Microsoft

Mobile Workplace is designed to

simplify the deployment of Windows

Powered mobile devices, business

applications, and support in the

enterprise through the use of

Microsoft and third-party

technologies and services.

Due to the complexity involved in

bringing together all the components

of a wireless enterprise solution,

Mobile Workplace provides

experienced systems integrators to

help develop, deploy, and if necessary

maintain solutions. Microsoft assists

in connecting businesses with

systems integrators.

Security and systems management

form the foundation of Mobile

Workplace, on top of which organisa-

tions can build the appropriate

business applications. Mobile

Workplace focuses on the following

areas: CRM (including sales force

automation), ERP (including supply

chain management), healthcare and

financial services.

www.microsoft.com/uk/mobility

WHERE NEXT?

STRONG FOUNDATiONSDAVID MCGREGOR, IT DIRECTOR, QUEEN ELIZABETH FOUNDATION

Queen Elizabeth Foundation leapfrogs from NT4 to Windows Server 2003

The Queen Elizabeth Foundation (QEF) is

a charity operating across the UK with a

head office in Leatherhead, Surrey. It

offers support to over 250,000 disabled

people across the UK with six centres

of excellence based in the south east

of England.

IT services supporting the organisa-

tion have developed over a number of

years, which resulted in seven NT4

domains being installed across the six

sites, along with a total of 15 NT4 mem-

ber servers running a variety of applica-

tions, file and print services, as well as

Exchange 5.5. Most clients were running

Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98, with

some machines still running Windows 95.

Increasing demand for IT services

across the organisation spurred David

McGregor, IT manager at QEF, to investi-

gate options for a major upgrade to the

entire infrastructure. The aim was to have

a centralised management based at

Leatherhead using a single domain

across all sites. E-mail services were to be

provided for all, including a gateway to the

internet and remote mail access using

Outlook Web Access.

Being a charity, budgets are very tight

and IT solutions need to be designed for a

five-year life span, so with an eye to the

future, McGregor took the opportunity to

migrate to Windows Server™ 2003 as

part of Microsoft’s Rapid Adoption

Program (RAP).

To help kick-start the project QEF

spoke to Eurodata Systems, a Microsoft

Gold Partner systems partner that has

undertaken recent projects for the Royal

Opera House and London Borough of

Hackney, among others.

Des Lekerman, managing director at

Eurodata Systems, believes that charities

need to be even more forward thinking than

many large corporations. “Charities need to

be 100 per cent efficient, so that all the

goodness goes to the good cause.”

The decision was taken to perform an

in-place upgrade of the largest existing

domain to Windows Server 2003, and

then to migrate users across from the

remaining NT 4.0 domains. A key element

of the upgrade was the ability of the hard-

ware to run the new operating system.

The original NT4 Primary Domain

Controller was running on a low-spec Dell

PowerEdge 2300 using a Pentium 450

processor with 128Mb of memory. The

other domain controllers at the remote

sites ran similar spec machines.

The addition of five new HP Proliant

DL360 machines running 1.2GHz proces-

sors with half a gigabyte of memory formed

the heart of the upgrade, with each

machine running Windows Server 2003.

The upgrade introduced QEF to their

new Active Directory®, and consolidated

seven domains into a single domain with

a domain controller at each site. The

design of the new domain was rolled out

on the basis of minimising complexity

while utilising key features of Active

Directory, such as improved management,

remote support, security and granular

administration features.

With an eye to keeping costs to a

minimum, the decommissioned domain

controllers have been upgraded from

8 FYITECHNOLOGY

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Windows Server 2003

128Mb to half a gigabyte of memory. At a

cost of a few hundred pounds these

servers have had Windows Server 2003

installed and made member servers of the

Windows 2003 domain.

A donation of midrange Pentium

desktop machines from Eurodata has

also opened the door for an upgrade to

Windows XP. The remainder of the domains

would be merged into the now native mode

central domain using the new version of

Active Directory Migration Tool (ADMT).

Other services will be incorporated

into the overall design. A Distributed File

System (DFS) was widely used under NT4

and will be upgraded to a domain based

DFS when Windows XP is installed in the

desktops adding resilience and easier

management. A domain naming service

(DNS) will now become the principle

means of host and service resolution with

WINS being maintained for the legacy

clients. The allocation of network address-

es using Dynamic Host Configuration

Protocol (DHCP) was also transferred to

Windows 2003, with the unexpected

benefit of complete scope management

without any reboots.

At this stage, McGregor decided not to

load the Active Directory client for

Windows NT 4.0 since he is looking at

upgrading clients in the near future.

McGregor recognised early in the

process that professional help was

essential to the success of the project.

Through Microsoft he engaged the help of

consultants at Eurodata Systems.

“Eurodata showed us how to do it,” says

McGregor.

9June 2003

For further information on

Windows Server 2003 visit

www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/

serverfamily

WHERE NEXT?

In turn, knowing that this was to

some extent uncharted territory, Microsoft

PSS offered direct help as part of the RAP.

“Communication was key, and Microsoft

really helped us fix problems as they

arose,” explains Eurodata’s Lekerman.

The domain structure was designed

for ease of upgrade and low mainte-

nance, and adopting Windows Server

2003 has meant that QEF now enjoys a

more stable and easily managed network

of servers. The resilience of the Active

Directory combined with a straightforward

design offers centralised management,

and a new core infrastructure upon which

new technologies such as Exchange 2003

and an intranet may be based.

QEF has benefited from improved

communications and easy access to data

and services across the enterprise, and

there are plans to introduce Exchange

2003 and Instant Messaging based on

the new XP desktop.

“Our aim is to make life easier for

disabled people,” says McGregor. He is

doing so by building the most efficient

network on the latest technology at the

lowest cost possible.

The UK-based high-fashion design,

wholesale and retail company Paul Smith

has shops in London, New York, Paris,

Milan and the Far East. These shops are

in addition to its original branch in

Nottingham and over 200 in Japan. Paul

Smith Limited remains self-financed and

the annual worldwide turnover of the

wholesale, retail and licensed business

combined is £233m.

The company manages its worldwide

IT infrastructure using Microsoft Windows

2000 Server, Active Directory and

Microsoft Exchange 2000 as the

backbone of a virtual private network

(VPN) on which a range of applications

and a web site are hosted. The central

servers are based at the company’s head

office in Nottingham, where 10 Windows

2000 Servers are used for a variety of

purposes, including domain controllers

and file and print servers. Other software

running on the system includes Microsoft

Exchange 2000, SharePoint Portal Server

2000, and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

The system has around 300 Windows XP

clients. An IT team of five manages the

remote systems across London, Milan,

Paris and New York.

Paul Smith’s London offices are

connected via a 2Mbps link and also

have domain controllers, file and print,

and application servers. Each of the

international branch offices has its own

Windows 2000 server providing domain

control services, such as domain naming

service (DNS), and dynamic host

configuration protocol (DHCP). The

servers all run Microsoft Internet Security

and Acceleration (ISA) Server and

Microsoft Exchange 2000. Other offices

that are Paul Smith franchises access e-

mail on the corporate network via an

Exchange 2000 server.

But the company wanted to make

even more use of the facilities it already

had, and identified potential benefits

from the development of a range of

business applications, a collaborative

workflow portal, and a customised project

management solution. These applications

could be developed using the .NET

Framework and Visual Studio .NET in a

faster development time, and the

applications could be more tightly

integrated into the overall IT

infrastructure.

Paul Smith was invited by Microsoft

to take part in an upgrade to Windows

Server 2003 through Microsoft’s Rapid

Adoption Plan (RAP). Then, through a

one-day Roadmap Planning workshop,

Lynx Technology, a Microsoft Gold

Certified Partner, met with Paul Smith

users to review existing and emerging

technologies. Lynx recommended

Exchange Server 2000 and SharePoint

Portal Server to exchange data and

enable users to store, index, share and

search data.

The benefits represented by Windows

Server 2003’s enhanced support for

Active Directory, improved security, and

the .NET Framework were all important

factors in the decision to make the move

to Windows Server 2003.

The company decided to upgrade

their domain controllers and application

servers in their head office and UK

branch office to Microsoft Windows

Server 2003, and to install Microsoft

Windows Server 2003 domain controllers

at the offices in New York, Paris, and

Milan. This new infrastructure would then

be able to take advantage of

improvements, such as better support for

Active Directory services, a new global

messaging infrastructure based on

10 FYITECHNOLOGY

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DESiGNS FOR THE FUTURELEE BINGHAM, IT DIRECTOR, PAUL SMITH

Paul Smith maintains design pre-eminence with Microsoft Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003

11June 2003

Outlook Web Access, and support for

instant messaging in Microsoft Exchange.

“We were looking for three main

benefits from the upgrade: better

manageability, better security and

stabilisation. The latter, in turn, leads to

increased uptime,” says Lee Bingham, IT

director at Paul Smith.

Bingham believes that the

manageability aspect will assist the small

IT team to manage disparate locations

from a central IT resource, while the

security benefits were key. “We have end

users that travel internationally. They want

remote access connectivity, so the security

aspect should pay dividends,” he says.

According to Bingham, the server

upgrade will form a platform for the

future. “Once the Windows Server 2003

upgrade is complete, we plan to move

straight over to Exchange 2003, which

will help us to facilitate the new features

of Office 11, which will be released later

this year,” he says,

The Exchange upgrade will, in turn,

tie in with the company’s remote access

plans – for example, in conjunction with

Microsoft and Orange the company

intends to deploy smart phones to its

international travelling workforce. ”The

Server 2003 upgrade will facilitate the

Exchange upgrade, which ties in nicely

with the mobility aspect,” says Bingham.

He is also hoping to begin a number

of pilot projects within the next six to 12

months, following completion of the

Server 2003 upgrade. In addition to the

improved infrastructure, Bingham wants

to make more use of collaborative

working practices and smarter

information management to reduce

management overheads. To achieve this,

he plans to assess some pilot schemes

based on Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint

For more information on Windows

Server 2003 and Exchange, visit:

www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/

serverfamily

WHERE NEXT?

Portal Server, and Visual Studio .NET.

The first pilot will look at automating

workflow using Microsoft Exchange to

manage online forms. By using Exchange

workflow forms, the approval and

authorisation elements can be

automated, including the business rules,

so reducing the company paper chase.

The second planned pilot is a

document management solution based

on SharePoint Portal Server 2000 that

will centralise document management

and offer a centralised single point of

reference. Microsoft Project Server 2002,

meanwhile, is also being investigated for

a team management solution that will

automate the management of fashion

collections within Paul Smith. Project

Server 2002 will offer team services and

team management so that managers can

make use of features such as critical

path analysis, distributed tasks and

completion monitoring.

The move to Windows Server 2003

will offer a range of benefits to Paul

Smith. The company hopes to streamline

a number of processes, and improve

manageability of its IT infrastructure.

“The project has been scoped well and

we have looked at where our end users’

difficulties lie. Microsoft has either

considered or built in complementary

support into the products for the future,”

says Bingham.

Training

12 FYITECHNOLOGY

A PLATFORM FOR LEARNiNG

Training can lead to more productive and loyal staff, and make the most ofexisting technology investments. A growing range of learning platforms nowprovides a combination of technical “know-how” and hands-on experience.

TIMES ARE TOUGH FOR IT DEPARTMENTS. Business in many sectors is depressed, and the pressure is on to make

the most of flat or slimmed-down budgets. For too many though, when budgets are tight the first thing to

disappear is often training.

In the past, training has had a poor image, with organisations unwilling to spend money sending employees

on courses for days on end, and unconvinced about return on investment.

However, this is a false economy, as initial outlay on training

will be returned many times over. A lack of qualified developers,

for example, will mean that any investment in new technology

cannot be realised, making it even harder for an organisation to

turn the corner in a tough business environment.

Indeed, making the most of existing IT investments,

requires trained individuals able to leverage the

full potential of technology. “If you are

about to buy a Formula One car, you

would train the driver to drive it,

rather than expect them to drive it

with their Mini Metro training,” says

Mark Buckley, training ancertification

group manager at Microsoft UK.

“Training is essential to understanding

and getting the best out of technology.”

In turn, training is a foundation for

professional certification, which acts

as a “badge of expertise” for

employers and peers alike.

For employers, a professional

qualification, such as a Microsoft

Certified Professional (MCP), is a

trusted sign that helps them identify the

individuals with the skills and expertise that can

help them to make the most of existing technology investments.

Furthermore, courses which lead to MCP accreditation can both

be trusted to refresh employees’ skills to the benefit of the

organisation’s productivity, and offer a means of motivating,

rewarding and, contrary to some employers’ beliefs, retaining

valued staff.

For the employee, meanwhile, accreditation marks them out

as an expert in their particular technology field, and raises their

worth in the eyes of both employer and peer.

In the past though, there has been an “accreditation-centric”

attitude towards training, whereby it was relatively easy to gain

certification through reading manuals and taking exams.

However, this often meant that individuals – while accredited –

lacked the all-important hands-on, real-world experience and

skills. The good news though, is that this situation is now

changing, and there is a growing number of learning

platforms to choose from, providing a

balance of academic knowledge and

real-world experience.

“Employers see training as

expensive and time consuming, they

don’t want to send people out of the

office for days on end. Therefore, they are

looking for a more cost-effective and

timely route to training,” says Claire Smyth,

Microsoft UK training and certification manager.

That route, says Smyth, is a “blended

solution” – a combination of self-paced

training, such as that offered by books and

online resources, with instructor-led

training, whereby individuals get to

use and “play with” technologies in a

hands-on scenario.

Microsoft, for example, now offers

a range of learning platforms, including online

resources, Microsoft Press® Books for self-training, as well as

Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) courses. Together, they

provide a more balanced approach to training, benefiting

employers and employees alike.

MOC courses, for example, are instructor-led programmes

held at Certified Technical Education Centres (CTECs) around the

country, offering five-day courses for specific technologies. Course

instructors are highly qualified, and an additional benefit is the

learning environment created by bringing together peers with

similar – or, just as importantly, different – questions and

challenges concerning a particular technology.

13June 2003

“We have added more real world scenarios and elements to

training through the MOC courses,” says Smyth. “And we rely on

highly skilled trainers to relay their real-world experience.”

Recently, Microsoft also added online mentoring to

supplement the MOC courses. Mentoring is a 24x7 resource,

whereby course attendees – who might have additional questions

once they have completed and digested a course’s contents – can

contact real-time mentors for guidance and answers.

Probably one of the most illustrative examples of the value of

training is the current need for expert .NET developers. As a

relatively new platform, many developers could benefit from

in-depth, hands-on training in the platform to leverage its true

potential. “With many organisations adopting .NET, they need to

look at their developers in that environment so they are better

equipped to leverage that platform,” says Buckley. “If you have

a Ferrari and only know about four gears, you will never use

fifth or sixth gear.”

When introducing something as radical as .NET technology, real

thought needs to go into what an organisation expects to

get from this investment, and what skills staff will need to ensure it

does so. But, as the experience of organisations such as

Berwin Leighton (see case study) shows, a considered and

committed approach to training can soon reward with benefits that

go beyond simply enabling staff to use the tools they are given.

Properly pursued, training leads to more productive and loyal

staff, a more innovative and flexible IT department, and real

bottom line benefits. That has to be worth investing in.

“Training is

essential to

understanding

and getting

the best out

of technology”

Microsoft certifications inspecific technologies provide a combination oftechnical knowledge, and“real world” skills andexpertise. They providevalidity of a holders’ expertise in the eyes ofemployers and peers alike.

For more information on training and Microsoft-certified

qualifications, visit: www.microsoft.com/uk/skills

WHERE NEXT?

Berwin Leighton Paisner trains for .NET

Today’s law firms no longer identify with their traditional

image of dust and old leather couches. A visit to the New

York, Paris, Milan or London offices of Berwin Leighton

Paisner (BLP) confirms that.

BLP, like so many of its counterparts, is now strictly high-

tech. Indeed, according to Janet Day, BLP’s director of IT,

both business and regulatory requirements are making ever

more sophisticated demands of law firms in the UK.

Consequently, Day believes that to stay abreast of market

forces, BLP’s IT resources have to be up to date, and its staff

properly qualified and trained.

In line with this policy – and realising the growing impor-

tance of web services and XML – BLP made the decision to

migrate to .NET technology. An integral part of that was to

consider what new certification and training staff would need

to make the most of the technology. “I think .NET is a com-

pletely different way of approaching software development,

so it’s not surprising that you have to learn to change your

software development approach to exploit it fully,” says Day.

Having identified what was required, BLP identified several

key development members who would benefit from acquir-

ing Microsoft Certified Solution Developer .NET (MCSD .NET).

The company already has a number of Microsoft-certified

developers and systems engineers, and trusts that the

qualifications provide holders with the relevant technical

knowledge, along with “real world” skills and expertise.

Choosing an organisation capable of delivering a training

regime that fitted with BLP’s requirements was not difficult:

Day has had a long-term relationship with Azlan, a member of

Microsoft’s Gold Learning Solutions programme – the highest

endorsement that a Microsoft Certified Technical Education

Centre can aspire to. “I would not consider looking for another

company to supply our training needs. I don’t believe there is

anything that we could demand of a company like Azlan that

it would not be able to supply,” says Day.

Since completing their training, and acquiring MCSD .NET

qualifications, BLP’s chosen developers have returned to

share their knowledge, and to contribute to the successful

completion of several .NET projects. The decision to invest in

new technology has thus been vindicated, and BLP’s cus-

tomers can continue to rely on the company to provide them

with innovative, high-quality services.

MICROSOFT CERTIFICATIONS

14 FYITECHNOLOGY

Windows Server 2003

DYNAMiC COMPUTiNGThe Dynamic Systems Initiative is an attempt to create a software architecturethat will allow customers to build dynamic, self-managing enterprise systemsusing industry standard components. The release of Windows Server 2003 hasshown the way. By Phil Jones.

IN MARCH, MICROSOFT UNVEILED A PLAN to solve one of the most intractable problems in the world of enterprise

computing: how to simplify and ultimately automate the design, deployment and operation of the modern data centre.

The Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) will take another three to five years to come to fruition, but it already has the

backing of some of the world’s leading IT vendors. In April, with the release of Windows Server 2003, Microsoft

delivered some of the first key building blocks to allow customers to

construct today the data centre of tomorrow.

The size of the problem that the DSI has been created to

address should not be underestimated. For the past decade, says

Michael Emanuel, senior product manager for Microsoft’s

enterprise management division, data centre staff have been

fighting to operate increasingly complex internet-centric multi-

server systems, using tools designed for the far simpler era of

mainframe-centric client/server systems.

It is proving to be an increasingly unequal and expensive

struggle. Already, 70% of IT spending is devoted simply to keeping

existing systems up and running, when it might be better spent on

new development. At the same time, the skills and expertise

required to maintain the fight are becoming the preserve of an

ever-dwindling body of scarce data centre professionals.

“There simply aren’t enough people around to manage or

operate the type of data centre world we have today,” says

Emanuel. It is time for a sea change in systems management

thinking and practice, and in particular he says, the time has

come when “applications need to participate in their own

management”.

CLOUDS OF COMPLEXITY

The fact that applications do not yet participate in their own

management is at the heart of the problem that the DSI has been

created to solve. At the moment, says Emanuel, management

tools still treat systems as, essentially, a collection of disparate

elements – resources such as disks, processors, memory, blades

and so on – aggregated as a single monolithic server driving a

single application.

Rather than proactively directing these systems in any

meaningful way, conventional management systems do little more

than monitor the myriad alerts directed at them by the individual

elements or resources. This is okay as far as it goes, since in a

simple monolithic server/application environment, knowing that a

disk has failed at least identifies the reason why the payroll system

has stalled.

In practice though, modern systems are not monolithic entities

running one application against a single server. Rather, they are

complex aggregations of both physical and logical resources

spread throughout a virtualised, distributed platform – in this

context, modern systems are described as “clouds of elements”.

So far though, systems that approach this level of automation and

self-determination have been restricted to multimillion-dollar

bespoke projects. But with DSI, Microsoft and its partners (see

box, Dynamic Systems Initiative) plan to put the digital nervous

system within the reach of all their customers, using commodity

storage, processing and network elements.

Dynamic Systems Initiative

Announced in March this year, the Dynamic Systems

Initiative (DSI) is a Microsoft-led, industry-wide effort to

create a software architecture that will allow customers to

build dynamic, self-managing enterprise systems using

industry standard components.

Vendors that have announced their support for DSI include

market leading players from the hardware, software and

services sectors, including: Centrata, Computer Associates

International, Consera Software, Dell Computer, EDS, HP,

Opsware, and Think Dynamics.

DSI’s XML-based Systems Definition Model (SDM) is

expected to set and conform to international standards, and

will be supported by products from DSI partners. Microsoft

itself has already provided DSI deliverables in the recently

released Windows Server 2003. They include automated

deployment services (ADS) for automated system

provisioning; Windows system resource manager for

dynamic systems resource management; volume shadow

copying services (VSS) and virtual disk service (VDS);

network load balancing (NLB); Windows Server clustering

(WSC); and Virtual Server.

15June 2003

Admittedly, it is going to

take a little time to achieve

this. At its heart the DSI may be

a software architecture project,

but its product will not be

something that can be neatly

retrofitted to old systems. To

build an application with a

digital nervous system, logical

synapses and neural pathways

need to be installed from the

outset. “It [the digital nervous system]

needs to be baked into the application. It needs to be

done at development, using tools that already have the

architecture embedded in them,” explains Emanuel. Once such

an application is completed, the expectation must be that it is

mounted on a resource platform that recognises the same

software architecture and talks the same language.

In DSI, the point of harmony between the worlds of the

developer, the operations manager, and the hardware and

software vendors, is enshrined in the initiative’s System

Definition Model (SDM). This

XML-based schema acts as

the blueprint for DSI systems

design and deployment, by

capturing and describing three

key categories of systems

information: a manifest of

resources available to the

system; an operational health

profile describing necessary

performance parameters and

required resources; and a

configuration profile.

Based on information

described using the SDM, “when

an application is installed it makes a contract with the virtualised

platform; this is basically a state model. The platform will check

that it has the resources to meet the applications requirements,

and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the contract,” says Emanuel. If the

response is ‘yes’, the platform makes the necessary resources

available to the application in order that the application can

maintain its “state”.

Thanks to the inherent

management capabilities of

application and platform,

Emanuel points out, any

management system that is

deputed to oversee the application’s

operations is already in possession

of a much richer body of

information about the

application and the resources

that are available to it, than

any conventional management

system has ever been in the past.

Indeed, at the point that a DSI application

signs its contract with the platform, the kind of tool that we think

of today as a management system is already on its way to

becoming redundant. Since the application now has “state” it is

effectively monitoring itself. More than that, because the SDM

also provides knowledge of other resources in the platform, the

application now has the potential to make demands on its own

behalf – responding to spikes in transaction volume by

demanding more blade servers, for example.

Before this kind of potential

can be fully realised though, the

platform has to be ready to

respond to resource requests

from the application, which

means that DSI-compatible

interfaces need to be available

from device manufacturers, and

the operating system has to be

equipped with the utilities to

exploit them. These are the

deliverables that the DSI

partners can begin to produce

even before the DSI architecture

itself is fully completed. To that

end, Microsoft led the way with the release of Windows Server

2003 in April.

WINDOWS SERVER 2003

Within the Enterprise version of Windows 2003 are half-a-dozen

utilities which, while not providing full DSI services today, will

nevertheless support them in future. But they will still provide

“There aren’t

enough people

around to manage

or operate the

data centres we

have today”

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16 FYITECHNOLOGY

immediate benefits to data centre managers today. The provision

of network load balancing (NLB), for instance, will allow

operations managers to moderate the “bursts” and “spikes”

caused by unpredictable incoming data traffic. The long-awaited

Windows Server Clustering (WSC) technology, meanwhile, will

ease the provision of scalable, high-availability services using

commodity servers.

Volume shadow copy services (VSS) and virtual disk storage

(VDS) are also introduced with Windows 2003. While these may

prove less immediately useful to the operations manager, they do

provide a DSI-compatible target for storage device managers to

aim at, and should rapidly gain appreciation among customers as

their potential is realised.

With VDS, for example, network attached storage (NAS) and

storage area network (SAN) vendors now have a set of application

programming interfaces (APIs) – the interfaces by which an

application communicates with the operating system, or other

applications and services – that they can write to. This will allow

their products to participate more completely in the Windows

environment. Using VDS drivers, for instance, an entire server can

now be booted from a SAN, obviating the need for expensive

direct access storage (DAS), and increasing system integrity by

permitting storage hardware to be swapped in and out in the

background “on the fly”. In combination with NAS, VDS may prove

even more powerful than that, and has the potential to turn a

commodity machine into a remote file server with terabytes of

data behind it.

VSS is also a “star” of the Windows Server 2003, says

Emanuel, adding to it something that is missing from almost all

other operating systems: the ability to snapshot and copy

production file systems to archival and mirror storage systems,

with barely any perceptible interruption to the application.

Previously, this ability has had to be hand-written into the

application to support each storage vendor, in order to be shadow

copy aware for each type of storage system. Now with VSS,

application developers have access to a universal shadow copy

API that can make any Windows application, such as SQL Server

or Exchange, shadow copy capable for all storage systems

supporting VDS with minimal effort.

The features of Windows Server 2003 that go furthest

towards realising the ultimate digital nervous system vision of DSI

are Automated Deployment Services (ADS), and Windows System

Resource Manager (WSRM).

COMMUNAL RESOURCES

With ADS, for instance, Windows users are taking the first steps

towards enjoying dynamic “bare metal” provisioning of new

hardware resources – that is, having access to hardware

resources as and when they are required. When DSI is fully

realised, ADS-enabled systems – assuming they have the

authorisation to do so in their SDM profile – will be able to reach

into the virtual platform and request extra resources as

transaction or traffic volume demand changes, and return them

to the communal resource as their necessity recedes.

At the moment, human intervention is still required to utilise

ADS, but it still significantly advances the threshold of systems

automation, streamlining tasks that might normally take hours

into a matter of minutes. In a current demonstration, for example,

Microsoft is able to show ADS automatically bringing up a 20-

blade Dell system in just eight-and-a-half minutes.

Ultimately, ADS will work hand-in-hand with another new

feature in Windows Server 2003 – WSRM. WSRM does at the

functional level what ADS does at a physical level – that is, it

allows dynamic control over which applications have access to

what resources at any given time, how much is available and

where exactly it can be found. This too, says Emanuel “is pretty

unique”, and goes beyond what is commonly possible in the Unix

world today, even though it too is restricted in what it can do by the

immature state of the rest of the DSI universe.

Nevertheless, services such as ADS and WSRM provide a few

pointers as to how DSI, ultimately, will be able to arbitrate

applications automatically, according to their respective priority

profiles defined in the SDM. At that point, the heavy burden that

data centre operations place on today’s enterprise IT resources,

as well as those that manage them, should be well on the way to

becoming a thing of the past.

www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003

WHERE NEXT?

“Network load

balancing moderates

the bursts and

spikes of incoming

data traffic”

17June 2003

FOR THOUSANDS OF MICROSOFT CUSTOMERS the day is looming when they must decide whether

or not to renew the Software Assurance (SA) covering their volume licence agreements. For the many

who have already realised Software Assurance benefits, there may

be no decision to make. But for those who still have doubts, or have

not bought Software Assurance before, Microsoft has recently

improved its Software Assurance offer.

When Microsoft introduced the Software Assurance

programme last year, volume licence customers who bought the

cover became eligible for free upgrades to the latest versions of

assured products for the duration of their two- or three-year

contract. For desktop software

users, a 29 per cent fee on top of

the original cost of their licence per

user per year ensured they could

always have access to the latest

versions of their products at no

extra cost. For server software

customers, the deal was better –

just a 25 per cent annual fee over

the original licence price.

A year later however, and

Microsoft is willing to concede that

the new Software Assurance deal

did not necessarily meet all

expectations and even Steve

Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, commented

that it would be an on-going project

to address these concerns.

Some customers, according to

Sue Hogg, software licensing

manager with Microsoft UK, did not feel that Microsoft’s Software

Assurance proposition was compelling enough or that their feedback

had been considered when launching the initial offering. The question

was: “Why hadn’t Microsoft done more to consult us first?”

“Since then,” says Hogg, “we have done a lot of work with

customers and partners to make Software Assurance more

valuable to them.” This culminated in May in the announcement of

a new deal that bundles a host of extra privileges within the basic

Software Assurance cover.

As ever with license deals, the devil is in the detail, and the

amount and scope of the new benefits offered to Software

Assurance customers is dictated to a great extent by the size and

type of volume licence agreement their cover is linked to. However,

from the smallest volume licence software buyer to the largest

enterprise customer, Microsoft is offering something that it hopes

will make taking out Software Assurance an altogether more

attractive proposition – at no extra cost.

In the case of desktop software buyers, for instance, Software

SOFTWARE ASSURANCEMicrosoft’s Software Assurance programme did not necessarily meet allexpectations on its introduction. Sue Hogg, software licensing manager atMicrosoft UK, highlights the company’s work to improve the programme.

Assurance now bundles free training days and e-learning features

aimed at both end-users and IT professionals, which will help

customers get the most from the latest versions of products that

they still receive under the basic Software Assurance terms. Parts

of Microsoft’s TechNet services, which customers would previously

have had to pay extra for, will also be opened free of charge to

Software Assurance buyers, and Microsoft has added two

additional features that will extend

the benefits of Software Assurance

beyond the confines of the office.

A Home User Rights option allows

customers to provide home users with

office software at home. Meanwhile, a

new employee purchase scheme will

let any Microsoft customer’s staff

member buy any Microsoft consumer

software at a 30-40 per cent discount

to the estimated retail price.

For server customers, the new

extras reflect customer requirements

in these areas. Some software

licensing tools are now available free

to Software Assurance buyers, as are

parts of TechNet. The new “carrot on a

stick” though, must be Microsoft’s

decision to bundle free support with

Software Assurance.

According to Hogg, customer consultation to support the new

Software Assurance deal showed that support has a “very high

perceived value” among server customers. So now, depending on

the size of their licence agreement, Server Software Assurance

buyers will receive a number of free phone- or web site-supported

“incidents” for the term of the contract.

It makes Software Assurance a more compelling deal, and it

may even persuade customers that have stuck to piece-meal

procurement for some products to go for volume licensing

agreements in future, in order to receive the valuable extras now

bundled with it.

For more details on the Software Assurance Announcement and

how it applies across all volume licence agreements please visit:

www.microsoft.com/uk/licensing

WHERE NEXT?

Software Assurance

On 1 September 2003, Microsoft is making improvements

to Software Assurance. The three main benefits are:

Productivity

Software Assurance provides access to the latest

technology. Individuals also gain benefits such as

home use rights.

Support and Tools

Organisations gain access to Microsoft support profes-

sionals, resources and tools, and to problem resolu-

tion support.

Training

Provides access to many levels of training in both

instructor-led course and e-learning.

Licensing

18 FYITECHNOLOGY

Web services

NOTHiNG TO FEAR

Some developers may be shying away from web services believing them to beintricate and complex. But, says Ivo Salmre, Microsoft’s UK product managerfor .NET developer technology, that is not the case.

WHEN CAN A TECHNOLOGY BE CONSIDERED to have left the cutting edge and joined the IT mainstream? When the

ease of developing solutions with that technology far outweigh the costs of using it. So it is with web services today.

The name itself may need some explaining. ’Web’ sounds big and exposed to the world, and ’service’ would seem

to indicate something intricate and complex. In truth, a web service need be neither. Web services can be used to solve

internal and external information needs, and building the “service” often consists of putting an easy to build wrapper

on top of existing infrastructure. Consuming a web service can be even easier. Using today’s modern development tools

like Visual Studio .NET, a developer simply points to the web service they want to utilise, and the necessary code to

access that networked resource is auto-generated for them.

Just as web pages exposed data and applications to people

over the intranet or internet as HTML, so web services

expose services to other applications as XML. Web services

are about making it easy to connect applications to

information and processes.

The XML-based approach to building integrated

systems has been in the news for about two years now,

and won accolades from organisations that have used

them to greatly reduce the time required to build and tie

together applications using disparate components of

systems from within and without their organisations. Web

services are now reaching the critical mass of adoption

that brings wide scale change. Just as HTML and the inter-

net hit a critical take off point when the amount of useful

web sites passed a certain threshold, so too are web

services reaching this critical inflection point.

Many developers have been waiting for the tools and

utilities to arrive that will minimise the risk and

maximise the productivity gains from adopting web service

integration methods. Some IT professionals charged with

operations and maintenance tasks have been shy of intro-

ducing unfamiliar technology, fearing that it may pose new

challenges and complicate an already heavy workload. In

fact, web services offer few new challenges to systems

administrators who are already familiar with managing

internet sites (see box, Web services for administrators), and although

.NET technology does bring some new issues for developers, these are

not so great that they should dissuade them from taking the plunge

(see box, Web Services for Developers). The benefits are there.

Indeed, Ivo Salmre, Microsoft UK’s product manager for .NET

developer technology, believes that since last year with the release of

Visual Studio .NET 2000, web services have been more than ready

for the mainstream. Now with the release of Windows Server 2003

and an accompanying update tool update, Visual Studio 2003,

developers and IT professionals have even more reason to take the

web services plunge. Windows and Visual Studio were already good

platforms for building web services but in their latest releases “we

have added a lot of things that just make it altogether easier.

You no longer need 60 people each with a PhD to get into web

services,” says Salmre.

A key development for the mainstream community is that Visual

Studio and Windows now both come complete with the .NET

Framework, and so each share the common features needed to build

and deploy a web service. For instance, Windows Server now includes

Enterprise Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI)

Services for the fist time, making it an ideal platform from which to

both host and access web services. The web services elements of

Visual Studio 2003, meanwhile, have also been made easier to use,

Salmre claims, and enhanced by the addition of new device access

Web services for developers

If web services pose a challenge to any part of the IT community, it is to

applications developers. But while it does not mean abandoning or

radically changing any of the basic procedures or tools that developers

use today to build conventional applications, web services demand new

levels of planning and co-ordination between teams of developers. In

particular, says Salmre, “What developers need to do differently is to

think more about architecture.”

To some extent, the new emphasis that web services place on architec-

tural planning stems from the simplicity that they bring to making the

building blocks of complex systems. In this situation, where individual

developers are so personally empowered,there is a temptation for them

to go off and say: OK, leave me alone, I’m just going to build this thing,

and I don’t need any help from anyone else,” says Salmre.

This is great for the individual, but for a development team it can lead to

confusion. Individual developers need to work to common document

format templates, and common interface standards.

But similar problems have always existed. As with any rapid application

development (RAD) environment, the flip-side of increased programmer

productivity is the requirement for developers to take greater strategic

responsibility.

19June 2003

interfaces that will

take web services to

handhelds today and

even smartphones in

the near future.

One such

example of a very

rich, publicly hosted

web service is Microsoft MapPoint®, which offers graphical city

maps, driving directions and points of interest for users around

the world. Other public web services can be queried for on

Microsoft UDDI directory, http://uddi.microsoft.com. To some

extent, the scale and complexity of some high profile services

already built using web services technology may make the task

seem daunting to mainstream developers, as they believe that the

technology is primarily intended for major systems integration

projects. In fact, says Salmre, web service technology is as

appropriate to use for minor internal projects, such as connecting

a company phone directory to the human resources (HR)

database, as it is for tying together the disparate systems of

different trading partners or supplying live air traffic control

information.

While web services can certainly scale from small to very large

systems, large cross organisation projects, however, are probably

not for the first time user. If the intention is to expose a company’s

critical information and transaction systems to public access over

the web, there will be security and authorisation issues to resolve

which are not yet catered for under the Web Services Interoperability

Organization’s web services standards specifications. The end result

is that building large scale public web services requires extra work

on the part of the implementer to meet the necessary security and

reliability needs. Standards are expected over the next two years,

and tools and common infrastructure support will follow.

No such issues stand in the way of internal projects, or projects

that involve sharing web services between trusted partners. As a

toe in the water exercise, Salmre suggests, new web service

adopters might try integrating an application with a third party web

service from a vendor such as Microsoft

itself. The company’s MapPoint .NET host-

ed, programmable subscription service, for

example, aggregates geographic informa-

tion from a variety of suppliers, and makes

it available to anyone who would benefit

from adding maps to their application.

All that a developer needs, says

Salmre, is a basic grasp of how to use

simple object access protocol (SOAP) and

XML and a subscription to the service. After

that, programs that despatch delivery

orders or appointment details can make

the recipient’s life a lot easier, by automat-

ically including a map of the target address

or meeting location. As for the developers

themselves, he says, using MapPoint

may prove a painless way of pointing the

way towards even greater productivity

gains in future.

Web services for administrators

Microsoft’s message to IT professionals responsible for operations adminis-

tration and maintenance is a simple one: If you already understand how to

run a web site, you also understand how to deal with web services. “This

really is the same thing as administering a web service. So I say don’t worry

– you already have the knowledge and skills to do this,” says Salmre.

When running a web site, the principle issues centre on setting and

enforcing access control, user authentication and authorisation. The

same issues are posed by web services – the only difference is that now

administrators are managing dialogues between two applications, rather

than between an end user and an application. Many of the tools that

system administrators use today to manage web sites will essentially be

the same tools used to manage web services.

The only surprise may be the scale of the authorisation and control

policies required as web services proliferate in their systems, and the

unfamiliar origins of some of these requirements.

A likely source of new web services in the future will be Office 2003,

which contains a feature called Info Path™ that enables a web service to

be triggered from within a document in much the same way as hyper-

links can be embedded in documents. Using Info Path, for instance,

users may create expense claim forms containing a button that auto-

matically sends their finished document directly to a financial or human

resource application, rather than to an accounts worker.

Indeed, according to Salmre, web services offer IT professionals the

chance to make a bigger and more direct contribution to their organisa-

tion’s day-to-day business and to help streamline operations. “They

should be saying to their bosses: we should try using this web service to

do this thing. It’s not difficult and we have the skills to manage it

already,” he says.

Messaging...

Credit card processing...

View inventory levels

Order tracking

Currency convertor...

Search engine

Hotel reservation engine

Create streetmap

Stock price news feed...

Debit transaction service

File Edit Style Item

WEB SERVICES ECOSYSTEM

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INFRASTRUCTURE SERVERS, EG NETWORK OPERATORS

AUTHENTICATION SUBSCRIBER DBPERSONALIZATION

SMSMMSBILLING

VOICE CALLSDATA CALLS ETC.

left: Future web services in action?

Stuart Okin, chief security officer at Microsoft UK, responds toconcerns that a user has about using Microsoft security patches.

USER: SECURITY PATCHES SHOULD BE EASY TO FIND

First, I want to say that I've recently recovered from being

“slammed”, and I'm fed up. The experience has left me feeling

that utilising Microsoft maintenance patches is too difficult and

too time consuming, and left me asking questions such as: “Why

is it so difficult to find the right patch?; Why do I need to have to

reboot after implementing some patches?; Why do I have to

install one patch before I can install another?”

Also, I don’t mind putting up with a few bugs, but when I do

find them I want Microsoft to make my life easier when it comes

to fixing them. I want a tool that makes it easier to find the right

patch for every Microsoft product. It should be easy to use, GUI-

based, and it should be able to find exactly what I need without

having to spend hours searching web notice boards.

STUART OKIN, CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER MICROSOFT UK

The Slammer worm was another example of a damaging cybercrime,

and we appreciate all the efforts made by operational staff around

the world to protect their systems from this attack. We actually

brought out the original fix for the vulnerability exploited by Slammer

last July. In the last year, we have made huge efforts to improve the

communication about releases of new patches, and you can register

at www.microsoft.com/security to receive the alerts.

Microsoft has also worked on improving the level of detail on the

alerts and of course the quality of patches, which also means reduc-

ing, where we can, the requirement to reboot. Microsoft regularly

releases cumulative patches that pull together all patches for a spe-

cific system to make it easier for customers to build a secure solution.

However, there is still much to do. We need to reduce the patch

installers so that all Microsoft software can benefit from a single

update site. The ultimate aim is to produce a truly self-healing system.

We also pull all the required security patches together into

service packs, and on a regular basis into cumulative patches.

However, there will be situations when individual patches are

required for specific vulnerabilities, but we feel that our customers

would prefer to be safe than waiting for a cumulative patch or

service pack.

USER: PATCHES SHOULD BE EASY TO INSTALL

Once I have identified the right patch, it should be simple to

install, and I don't want to have to install multiple patches to fix

multiple problems. If I install an operating system for instance, all

I should have to install is the product, the latest service pack, and

one patch that installs all the latest patches simultaneously.

STUART OKIN: PRODUCT INSTALLATION

In terms of product installation, Microsoft has brought out a

number of systems to aid customers in deploying patches, these

include Automatic Update for Windows, Software Update Services

and, later this year, SMS version 3. We also offer services in

conjunction with our partners – Microsoft Solution Management –

which takes customers through a patch management lifecycle. This

is based on industry-recognised standards (IT Infrastructure Library

– ITIL) for managing critical systems.

Last year, Microsoft released Baseline Security Analyser (MBSA).

MBSA provides a GUI-based analysis of your desktop or server, iden-

tifying not only patch requirements, but also potential configuration

changes in applications such as Windows Office and IE.

USER: USING EVALUATION COPIES ON MICROSOFT SOFTWARE

Also, when will I be able to use patches on evaluation copies of

Microsoft software? I understand why Microsoft has a policy that

forbids this, and I know that in theory I should not be running

evaluation software with production systems. But in the real

world, sometimes the only way to properly evaluate software is

in conjunction with production systems, and as things stand,

whenever I do that Microsoft forces me to make my systems

vulnerable because I cannot secure them with the correct patch.

STUART OKIN: PRODUCT EVALUATION

In response to your concerns about using patches on evaluation

copies, Microsoft invests in a variety of programmes that allows

customers to evaluate beta software versions with full Microsoft

support and build updates. It is true that evaluation software of

released products is not always updated to reflect the latest

security patches – a decision we took because, as you quite

rightly point out, the software is not recommended for a live

environment and therefore the impact is restricted. However, where

the virus is significant, such as the recent Slammer virus, we have

destroyed all SQL evaluation software and replaced it with

protected copies.

To find out more about the products and services Microsoft offers to

IT administrators, please visit www.microsoft.com/security

What’s your opinion? Or do you have a “rant” of your own that you would like Microsoft torespond to? Go to www.microsoft.com/uk/fyitechnology to share you thoughts.

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